


Charades

by CuriosityRedux



Series: Dragon Drabbles Berk [21]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Hiccstrid - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 22:33:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16752703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriosityRedux/pseuds/CuriosityRedux
Summary: Hiccup's sworn to keep his mouth shut. Technically.





	Charades

**Charades**

**-**

“Mom!”

It’d been over twenty years, and yet she never got tired of the word. She could remember quiet mornings of bending over the infant in her arms, laughing, “Mama? Can you say ‘mama’, Hiccup?” But in the end, she’d never gotten to hear his first word. She was never Mama or Mommy. Always Mom. Once ‘Valka’, during a terrible argument they’d had shortly after his father’s death. But she’d seen the regret on his face before the word was even finished cutting through the air. He wore his emotions on his face.

He’d gotten that from her.

But sometimes the way he said her name made up for losing the Mamas and Mommys. He peppered his sentences with it, as if his tongue itched to remind himself who she was. He entered his childhood home without hellos or greetings, just, “Mom?” She’d heard him cry it, laugh it, shout it over the cacophony of the Great Hall. He whispered it when he found her crying over the trunk of Stoick’s old clothes. He’d groaned it when she couldn’t keep her fingers from fidgeting in his hair the day of his wedding. 

And yet, the way he blurted it that morning sounded different. And she couldn’t put a finger on it.

Her son’s face was positively illuminated, a bright light flickering in his eyes. Behind them, there seemed to be a sheen of something hesitant, vulnerable, but his cheeks were spread wide in an enormous smile. Hiccup had almost slipped and fallen face first into the dragon stables in his sprinting search for her, and she blinked with alarm at the chief’s undignified entrance.

“Hiccup!” she exclaimed, rising from where she knelt by an attention-loving Gronkle. “What’s all this about?”

The young man jogged over, his prosthesis scraping against the stone floor and his chief’s mantle billowing behind him. It was a gift from the villagers after he found it too difficult to wear his father’s, and though he’d grown into the rich black furs a little, it still just barely dusted his ankles. It made him look older. Like Stoick.

“I have to tell you something,” he gasped, his chest rising and falling with labored breaths. She furrowed her brow and placed a hand on his cheek, but her lips smoothed with a smile. “But I can’t  _tell_  you.”

Valka chuckled and shook her head. “How do you plan on telling me without  _telling_  me?” A pang of fondness squeezed her chest.

"Just watch, okay?” Excitement reverberated through his whole body, rolling off of him in waves. Stepping back, he kept her gaze and held out his hands as if to say, “Watch.”

She hadn’t been apart from humans so long that she could have forgotten this game. At one point in her life, she’d spent several nights laughing until her belly hurt over Gobber’s drunken attempts at Viking charades. For a time, she and the chief had been the champions. So when her son started communicating with a series of vague gestures and amusing expressions, channeling those evenings of her youth became second nature.

Hiccup began by waving his hands out by his head.

“Hair.”

Nodding, he jumped a little with pleasure over her participation and continued. He then pulled the invisible mane over his shoulder and began fixing it into a braid. His eyes batted and blinked, and he cocked his hip to the side in a feminine impression.

“A woman? A girl? A pretty girl?”

Hiccup gave her an affirmative, but flexed his fingers in thought. His eyes wandered the stables for a moment before landing on something, and he waved and pointed to a group of Nadders. Hiccup whistled, and Valka recognized his wife’s dragon when it popped its head up from the little circle. Stormfly screeched happily at the sight of him and flew down from the perch. She nudged him affectionately, and Hiccup chuckled before leaping onto the Nadder’s back. Then he restyled his imaginary braid. 

“Astrid!” she guessed, her eyebrows lifting. Somehow her son had a way of making her feel young again, like the twenty years separating her from Berk hadn’t even passed.

He beamed and nodded. Then he slid off of Stormfly, ignoring the nips and nuzzles the dragon gave his shoulder. His hands resumed a series of blindingly fast motions, flowing from one silent scene into another. Valka attempted to follow, blurting guess after guess, but he kept shaking his head and grimacing. 

“Slow down, slow down,” she told him, her brow furrowing with concentration as she watched closely. “One thing at a time.”

Hiccup sighed and slumped forward dramatically, but then he straightened and tried again. He did the braid. 

“Astrid.”

His hand turned into a beak, or a mouth, and he brought his thumb and fingers together next to his ear. 

“Talking. Told?”

He gestured at himself.

“You. Astrid told you…?”

The last of his news was the most complicated and absurd by far. He knelt by Stormfly’s feet, earning him some very strange looks from the dragon, and lifted his arms over his head like a little roof. Then he parted his fingertips and poked his head out. Standing, he imitated Stormfly’s stance, bringing his elbows to his sides and turning his hands into little wings.

Valka was drawing a blank. She stammered and shook her head, trying not to laugh as her son repeated the series of movements. “Dragons? Dragon egg? Hatching?”

Hiccup’s eyes shot wide, and he flapped his hands as if to tell her to continue. “Hatchlings? Astrid told you about hatchlings? Stormfly’s hatchlings?”

Her son broke his silence to groan with exasperation. Then he used his arms to create a wide circle around his middle. 

“Fat? Fat hatchlings?”

Hiccup did the braid. Then the circle. Then the hatching.

Realization made her gasp. Her hands flew to her mouth. “Hiccup! Is she—”

“Yes!” He punched the air with his fist and made a noise of victory loud enough to make the dragons quiet and look down at them. 

Valka closed the distance between them, throwing her arms around her boy’s neck. “I am so happy for you,” she whispered, her throat feeling tight. His hands slid to her back and he squeezed her close. 

“I’m so scared,” he admitted on an exhale. He trembled, and she could feel his grin against her shoulder, but she knew exactly what he meant. 

She could only hold him tighter, pressing a kiss against his hair. Later, she would have to tell him everything she knew— how it  _was_  scary, but so wonderful. How everything would be okay. How proud she was of him. But for now, if she spoke, she knew her voice would crack. Because she’d figured out why that “Mom” felt different.

Because he was saying, “Grandmother.”


End file.
